Love Hurts: A Day With Cupid

  

  "Frankly, I find it offensive," says Cupid, "that people stereotype me as a diaper wearing baby." 

  I had the unique opportunity of following world-renowned 'loveman' Cupid while he went on with his daily routine. Contrary to the image of a cute arrow-wielding baby with fat rolls spilling every which way and such that Valentine's cards love to portray, Cupid is actually 6.1, broad-shouldered, scruffy, and in possession of a low baritone voice. Today, he is wearing a black hoodie and a pair of sweats. He assures me that, despite his attire, he is not a rapist. A canvas duffel bag is slung over his shoulder as we walk through the dim halls of an apartment building. A spring 6 PM Montreal sunset spills through the dust coated windows. Signs labelled 'Roof Access' and 'No Unauthorized Entry' are taped to a door that we find to be unlocked.

  From our vantage point on the roof, we can see a small park inhabited by pigeons and some skinny jean-wearing lone wolves reading Marx, or whatever it is that lone wolves read these days.

  Cupid lowers his binoculars and holds them out to me, "See that guy reading the...uh-"

  I squint through the freshly polished lenses, "The Communist Manifesto. Definitely The Communist Manifesto."

  "Man, this'll be a tough one. Anyways, see the girl just behind that statue, sitting on the bench under that tree? The one in the flannel? Right, so she's totally the one for Lenin over there."

  "Marx. I think you mean Marx," I pause, "how do you know she's the 'one'?"

  "Listen, who's been doing this for the past eternity or so? Me. That's right, me. I've got workplace experience. I just know," he smiles knowingly and starts to unzip the duffel bag. He pulls out several polished black pieces of metal, the last of which I recognize as the body of a rifle.

  "Whoa, whoa. Shouldn't you have a bow and arrow?" 

  Cupid momentarily makes annoyed eye-contact with me, and then continues to screw the pieces of steel together to form the barrel and handle of a sniper rifle.

  "Okay, so here's how it went down," he says as he fishes around in the bag and pulls out an optical scope, "when I was still a baby, rolls of fat and all, a reporter climbed up to the window of my playroom, and saw me playing with a bow and arrow. Now, he wrongly assumed that this was my weapon of choice, though I can't see how he'd assume anything near that, considering I couldn't even stand at the time. He wrote an editorial about it, became famous, and created the image that is baby Cupid. He neglected to do any research about how the bow and arrow was a teething toy given to me by Jupiter. Jupiter always gave weird gifts."

  "So you never used a bow and arrow? Wow."

   "Nope." 

  He stands up, the gun gleaming in the orange light. He stuffs a hand into his sweatpants and pulls out a single object: a huge shining pink bullet. 

  "Because of that bow and arrow incident, people always say things like 'Cupid loosed his love-shaft'. I find that particularly tiresome. First of all, I've never used an arrow for anything but teething. Secondly, the phallic innuendo going on there is just plain disgusting. It's not as if I shoot weenies out of my gun."

  He moves his eye to the scope, the rifle now resting on the roof's edge, and pulls the gun's bolt back to lock the pink bullet in.

  His finger hovers over the trigger, "Who needs love-shafts," he breaths in slowly, "when you have .50 caliber ammunition?"

  The hammer of the gun strikes the bullet out in a brilliant flash of pink smoke. An ear-warping bang tears through the sunset air.

  Screams rise from the square below. Cupid moves his eye away from the lens in confusion, and then looks through the scope again. He jumps up abruptly and starts folding the gun into his bag.

  "Right. Okay. So 'Marx' is dead."

  "WHAT?!"

  "He moved. He moved and I hit him in the head."

  "Oh Jesus."

  "Anywhere but the heart, it's just a normal bullet," he pulls my by the arm towards the stairwell door. I follow in my daze.

  "That's one hell of a margin of error!" 

  The screams from below get louder, and the sound of sirens filters in through the door closing behind us. Cupid skips down the stairs, taking two steps at a time.

  "Crap crap crap," he mutters, "Crap."

  He half-kicks, half-jumps through the door labelled 'Roof Access' and into a hallway. Doors open, the tenants peek out attempting to satisfy the human curiosity that appears whenever a loud noise is heard. Someone notices the barrel of Cupid's rifle sticking through the bag and shouts at our backs.

  As we near the lobby and the outside world, Cupid, still sprinting full-tilt, sticks out his free hand, "Wonderful meeting you, but this is where we part ways."

  I shake his outstretched hand and we crash through the condominium doors. He rockets into an alley, and I jump the fence of a nearby backlot. 

  That's the last I ever saw of Cupid.

  He seemed pretty cool, except that he really did shoot a man through the head. 

  That might've not actually been Cupid.

Feo P-S, 2012.